Remembering the tradition of Navaratri

It is usually difficult for people to walk down North Mada street due to the crowds and people will be jostling between vendors and customers. From here vendors get goods from Kancheepuram, Panruti, Cuddalore, Villianur and other places, spread their wares and do brisk business, a week before Navarathri.

Three decades ago, the number of shops were not this many and shopping for the Navarathri dolls was a pleasant experience. There were half the number of shops and double the number of customers, said S Loganathan, a potter, who has been selling dolls here for more than 35 years.

He tells that even a few years ago, many of his family members were involved in this business and the entire family used to design, create and paint the whole year. Mylapore was our favourite sales point. Whatever we made was sold off completely.

Arumugam, another 70-year-old vendor says that he used to get the dolls from Kosapet in Chennai. A large number of potters made the dolls and sold it to us. As years rolled by, many gave up the trade and me and my father began to visit Chinna Kancheepuram, Vandipalayam near Vellore and Karadipalayam to procure the dolls, he said.

“I was just a 12-year-old lad who loved the family tour to Mylapore where we used to camp here for 40 days. There were coconut trees around the temple tank which was full of water. There was no lack of water and buttermilk shops. The friendliness was pleasant and every household here were more than willing to share their food, shelter and water. In return, we used to give them a doll or two for their warm gesture,” said Arumugam.

Eighty-year-old Ramu, a resident of Mylapore recalls the bonhomie between the vendors and customers. Most of the houses in the Mada streets had thinnais, where the vendors used to keep the dolls safely in sacks.  

“The vendors did not camp just in Mylapore. They used to go around pockets like Triplicane and T Nagar too. Carrying the dolls on their heads in bamboo baskets, they used to call out ‘Puducherry bommai’ as dolls from Puducherry were considered to be the best then,” said Ramu.

Kaliaperumal (65), a relative of Arumugam explains that it was because the black clay obtained from the river and the Navada sand that is available on the banks of the Sankaraparani river was the best for the dolls. When the artisans knead it with their hands and feet, it becomes so supple to be cast into moulds and is a scene to be seen, he elaborated. “But over the years tasks such as procuring clay from the lakes and river and firing the dolls in kilns became difficult,” he sighs.

It is not only the sexagenarians and Septuagenarians who recall the good old days. Thirty-year-old Senthil Kumar, a doll vendor and an auto driver from Tambaram, who sources his dolls from Cuddalore and Villianur also loved his visits to Mylapore along with his father as a teenager. “I loved to listen to the tales of sales from my father who used to dance around my grandfather whistling all the while when he carried the basket of dolls on the streets of Mylapore,” he concluded.